


Home at Last

by ShadowHaloedAngel



Series: Then and Now [12]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers Family, Coulson is channelling Vetinari, Friends are the family you choose for yourself, Gen, Home, Phil Coulson Has the Patience of a Saint, Pratchett references, Strike Team Delta are a family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-11 12:21:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3327023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowHaloedAngel/pseuds/ShadowHaloedAngel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a very long time Clint Barton didn't really believe he would ever have a home or a family. As he got older he realised these weren't necessarily things you /had/ so much as things you made yourself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home at Last

**Author's Note:**

  * For [awildlokiappears](https://archiveofourown.org/users/awildlokiappears/gifts).



Clint was rolling his shoulders a little as he walked back into his room, dumped his pack unceremoniously, and his bow case a little more gently before he threw himself on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, spread-eagled, a little smile resting on his lips despite himself. 

He was sweat-soaked, bruised, battered, bone tired, but he was happy. This was home. These four walls (and the attached bathroom and kitchenette in case he didn't feel like facing communal meals and/or got hungry for a midnight snack) were his, and it showed. There were cheap kitschy souvenirs on most of the surfaces, one wall had a motif of archery targets in purple (because purple was badass thank you very much), there was a dartboard on the back of the door, and pictures of his family all around. Because this was home and he had a family now. 

It had taken a long time to get used to the idea of what a family was supposed to be - it wasn't like he had the healthiest idea. The little reading he'd managed to do as a child had left him with an idealistic impression which nothing had ever lived up to. So for most of his life he'd assumed there was just something wrong with him and Barney, something that meant that they didn't deserve what good children had because of something innate. 

Then the circus had taught him... well, it had taught him a lot of things, but it had taught him that families were not always in cookie cutter moulds, and that blood didn't guarantee anything. Or at least it had been the first lesson in blood ties, albeit one he hadn't really cared to hear straight away. That had taken a long time to sink in, but when you had someone who had always been there for you then you had to try, right? Effort was not a one way street, that was what he kept telling himself. 

But then, at his lowest point, starving, beaten, tired, wet and cold, hanging out on a rooftop for a killshot at some low level Maggia goon who was being a pain, some guy in a sharp suit had sat down next to him, offered him a thermos, and introduced himself. 

Of course, Clint had booked it, but then the guy had shot him in the leg and Clint found that wasn't hugely conducive to movement. 

So he'd taken the soup, and some medical treatment (it was an in and out, minor muscle damage, no major blood vessels, no chips to bone, that should have been a clue that this guy knew what he was doing) and at the end of all that... he'd run again. 

But Coulson had followed and in the end, when he was waiting for a prison sentence that would probably carry several life terms, Coulson had talked to him about angels, and Clint had come to realise that maybe they did exist after all. But, with that tiny little smile on his lips (something Clint had come to fear, seriously, that smile was never a good sign for anyone), Coulson had explained that the thing about angels was that you only ever got one. 

So Clint had signed up, his debts were cleared and so was his record, and he found himself working as a specialist sniper for a shadowy government organisation. Well, second to the circus this was a great place to use a codename. Fortunately he already had one. 

They hadn't thought he was slow, they'd just taken him as he was and they had programs which had helped him catch up and get his GED. Turned out he wasn't "slow" or "stupid" he was just... well, dyslexic was the word they'd used. He was wired wrong. And that wasn't his fault and it wasn't just him and it wasn't something "wrong" with him. And he'd realised what it felt like to be proud. 

And he'd started running missions, and there hadn't been punishments for stupid mistakes, and he didn't have to train until his fingers bled or worry about his next meal. And he'd thought he was going soft until they brought in the girl. The little Russian girl with hair red as the blood which stained her skin as she fought like a wildcat... but she'd let them catch her in the end, and that had been when Clint realised that you could build a family yourself, when he and Coulson and Natasha were crashing on the couch in the safehouse, eating pizza and watching some awful Jackie Chan movie. 

They'd formed a tight knit unit, become the best of the best, and Clint was just starting to become confident in that when they were recruited officially to the Avengers Initiative.

To be sure that had started off in a shit spiral, but now... well, now he had four walls, a floor, a ceiling, a bathroom all his own and a view over New York that some people would kill for. He had a Soviet assassin for a best friend, and another one who lived downstairs and liked to try to beat his range scores. He had a super soldier living on the floor below who spent hours sketching out the windows, and a Norse god who was almost as good as he was at the Wii, and a pet genius who liked to bitch about SHIELD R&D and make Clint's gear even better. And Bruce. The kind doctor with the gentle hands who made him not quite so desperate to skip medical these days (a fact for which Coulson was grateful). And he had, all around the walls, these little things he'd picked up on missions around the world, all of them worthless without the memories attached to them, because that was what a souvenir was for, and if there was one thing he had learned in the last fifteen years, it was that the value of something was what you determined it to be, and never just based on its component parts. Nothing was that simple, people were complicated, but right now he had a chance to catch some zzzs after saving the world again, before they had another MarioKart championship later. He had a title to defend after all.


End file.
